IMAGE: Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S. is a Regenstrief Institute investigator and an associate professor of family medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.
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Credit: Regenstrief Institute

INDIANAPOLIS -- Regenstrief Institute investigator Shaun Grannis M.D., M.S., associate professor of family medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, has been inducted as a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics. He joins a select elected group of individuals who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of biomedical informatics.

Dr. Grannis, an internationally recognized expert in informatics and biosurveillance, directs the multidisciplinary Indiana Center of Excellence in Public Health Informatics at the Regenstrief Institute, one of only four such Centers for Disease Control-funded centers in the nation.

He has developed methods to protect the privacy and confidentiality of health information used for public health syndromic surveillance. He is project director for an ongoing initiative integrating data flows from over 120 hospitals across Indiana for use in public health disease surveillance and clinical research. For the past eight years, this 24/7 system has received real-time data from participating hospitals amounting to more than 2 million transactions per year, and has detected public health outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness and carbon monoxide poisoning and monitored influenza and other diseases across Indiana.

"With the Regenstrief Institute's decades of expertise in informatics, plus input from the CDC and the Indiana State Department of Health, we are developing truly novel ways to improve the health of our state and eventually the nation," Dr. Grannis said.

He holds an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received his medical degree from Michigan State University and pursued post-doctoral training in medical informatics and clinical research at the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University. Dr. Grannis was named a Regenstrief Institute investigator in 2003. Earlier this year, Dr. Grannis served on the Institute of Medicine committee that authored the report, "Primary Care and Public Health: Exploring Integration to Improve Population Health."

Dr. Grannis joins William Tierney, M.D., Regenstrief Institute president and CEO, and Stephen Downs, M.D., institute investigator, as fellows of the American College of Medical Informatics.

All three are IU School of Medicine faculty members.

"In a very few number of years, Shaun Grannis has become a global leader in health information exchange whereby health care information from a number of disparate sources can be brought together to follow patients wherever they go for care," Dr. Tierney said. "In addition, this same combined information can be used to better understand and manage health care to enhance its quality and cost-effectiveness."

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